My nephew, currently working for the Dubois Meets Fugger brandbreeding agency, said they’re in the running for the European Awards For Creative Excellence (running from November 29th til December 1st).
The viral they’re nominated for is for the Mini, and it’s a pretty good one. Other known competitor is These Days, the agency I’ve been helping out a bit just recently, with their ‘Need More Space‘ campaign for Pioneer.
For Dubois Meets Fugger :
The Mini Site shows a nifty clip, but the campaign has been terminated on June 17th.
The campaign itself was based on a rather revolutionary degree of interactivity, where participants could enter their friends’ mobile numbers, and those friends would then receive an email with a link to the viral clip. The cult-movie styled clip with extremely weird situations and actors shows people who’re receiving a phone call. The last call made is one to… the friend’s own mobile phone. Pretty funky !
The word that’s mentioned is ‘Béguinage’ a French word that covers a small religious city where Beguines used to live. These so-called “holy women” (Latin: mulieres sanctae, or mulieres religiosae) first appeared in Liège toward the end of the 12th century. Use of the word “Beguine” (Latin: beguina) was established by the 1230’s. Its etymology is uncertain. This word ‘Béguinage’ was a password to win two Mini convertibles for two months.
Here’s a scene from the viral, click to go there
This viral is listed on page #8 of the nominees.
As for These Days, I’ve mentioned their campaign before. The clip itself doesn’t really have the ‘waw, cool’-emotion a viral really needs, but it still is a pretty funny viral. Overall reactions from the people that’ve seen it is that it’s good, but a little too short to be a very good viral and that the idea might be dubbed from another clip that ran across the internet a little while before this viral popped up. (the one with the antilope running through the open prairie and then bumping into the one tree that was growing there, right next to two lions who were seeking refuge from the burning sun.) Still, an antilope isn’t a biker and animals aren’t human beings so a totally different emotion is being triggered. See it in the These Days Archive or check out the clip below :
This viral is listed on page #9 of the nominees.
Thanks for the tip [Flowris] !
Coolz0r - Marketing Thoughts » Prepare Your Hair
May 23, 2006 at 11:53 am
[...] Why is this campaign so average? Because it’s been done before and this is a lame attempt to do ‘the same thing’. A little while ago, there was an extraordinary campaign for the Mini, called ‘béguinage’, I blogged it in November last year, because it was nominated for the Viral EurobestLive Awards. I think Opel’s take on the matter (by the agency that produced it) is a bit ridiculous because the only thing they did was buy the technology for the phoncalls from Markee.be. They (Opel) are also in the automotive sector, so there’s a high degree of ‘me-too’ that kind of surrounds the campaign. Opel offers one month of TwinTop pleasure, whereas Mini Cooper offered two months. [...]